On Sept. 17, the Pakistani government shut down access to YouTube. The purported reason was to block the anti-Muslim film trailer that was inciting protests around the world.

One little-noticed consequence of this decision was that 215 people in Pakistan suddenly lost their seats in a massive, open online physics course. The free college-level class, created by a Silicon Valley start-up called Udacity, included hundreds of short YouTube videos embedded on its website. Some 23,000 students worldwide had enrolled, including Khadijah Niazi, a pigtailed 11-year-old in Lahore. She was on question six of the final exam when she encountered a curt message saying “this site is unavailable.”

Niazi was devastated. She’d worked hard to master this physics class before her 12th birthday, just one week away. Now what? Niazi posted a lament on the class discussion board: “I am very angry, but I will not quit.”

In every country, education changes so slowly that it can be hard to detect progress. But what happened next was truly different. Within an hour, Maziar Kosarifar, a young man taking the class in Malaysia, began posting detailed descriptions for Niazi of the test questions in each video. Rosa Brigída, a novice physics professor taking the class from Portugal, tried to create a workaround so Niazi could bypass YouTube; it didn’t work. From England, William, 12, promised to help and warned Niazi not to write anything too negative about her government online.

None of these students had met one another in person. The class directory included people from 125 countries. But after weeks in the class, helping one another with Newton’s laws, friction and simple harmonic motion, they’d started to feel as if they shared the same carrel in the library. Together, they’d found a passageway into a rigorous, free, college-level class, and they weren’t about to let anyone lock it up.

By late that night, the Portuguese professor had successfully downloaded all the videos and then uploaded them to an uncensored photo-sharing site. It took her four hours, but it worked. The next day, Niazi passed the final exam with the highest distinction. “Yayyyyyyy,” she wrote in a new post. (Actually, she used 43 y’s, but you get the idea.) She was the youngest girl ever to complete Udacity’s Physics 100 class, a challenging course for the average college freshman.

That same day, Niazi signed up for Computer Science 101 along with her twin brother Muhammad. In England, William began downloading the videos for them.

High-End Learning on the Cheap

The hype about online learning is older than Niazi. In the late 1990s, Cisco CEO John Chambers predicted that “education over the Internet is going to be so big, it is going to make e-mail usage look like a rounding error.” There was just one problem: online classes were not, generally speaking, very good. To this day, most are dry, uninspired affairs, consisting of a patchwork of online readings, written Q&As and low-budget lecture videos. Many students nevertheless pay hundreds of dollars for these classes — 3 in 10 college students report taking at least one online course, up from 1 in 10 in 2003 — but afterward, most are no better off than they would have been at their local community college.

Now, several forces have aligned to revive the hope that the Internet (or rather, humans using the Internet from Lahore to Palo Alto, Calif.) may finally disrupt higher education — not by simply replacing the distribution method but by reinventing the actual product. New technology, from cloud computing to social media, has dramatically lowered the costs and increased the odds of creating a decent online education platform. In the past year alone, start-ups like Udacity, Coursera and edX — each with an elite-university imprimatur — have put 219 college-level courses online, free of charge. Many traditional colleges are offering classes and even entire degree programs online. Demand for new skills has reached an all-time high. People on every continent have realized that to thrive in the modern economy, they need to be able to think, reason, code and calculate at higher levels than before.

The democratization of education has arrived in the form of these moocs. The new mooc wave is a boon for education. For too long too many institutions have been charging too much!

However, there is a distinct lack of coverage on what is going on in the mooc scene across the pond. iversity, for example, are exploding ( https://iversity.org/courses ). They have 3 courses where you can get ECTS credits-credits that are interchangeable between in european universities. exciting times.

Yet college costs are through the room, while competing countries get very low cost education and even Microsoft has given out source code and opportunities (e.g. training H1Bs, "How Microsoft Conquered China" (article from 2007) and plenty of others.

They say it is a "choice" - well, no degree = no job. Why do the people who say "choice" clam up when asked for details, since a minimum wage job will NEVER allow the time needed to get the money to pay for college with cash.

Even teachers, who pay through the teeth, see starting salaries that do not allow them to live or pay back debt.

They say government needs to get out of the way, except private industry demands people with degrees relevant to the field. Colleges see this and know that people have no alternative. The result is grossly inflated prices. That, not government involvement, is the 'free market'. Now look up how much taxpayer-funded subsidy is given to colleges, private industry, etc, and let's really talk about government interference, corporate welfare, why students who want to improve their lives in good faith get the short stick while everyone else can get forgiveness.

Not just college; many high schools in Florida use online training to avoid hiring teachers, or even when they don't have sufficient certified kids for the AP courses to justify contracting an AP teacher. Single girl in my personal son's graduating class took almost all of her Senior year classes online (only it was thru FL virtual school which is an unqualified catastrophe! Terrible system, confusing, inferior materials, not user-friendly or even well prepared). -Dario from http://www.primeblog.us

"The purported reason was to block the anti-Muslim film trailer that was inciting protests around the world." see more... Isn't it amazing how in 2013 these countries still want to control their people through the means of religion... I don't see where in the Qu'ran it mentions thou shalt have the power to veto watching films. ;)

The undergraduate learning experience is not just about pure academics. The growth of a student as a positive and productive member of society during the undergraduate experience is equally important to the growth of their intellect. For most students, the undergraduate experience exposes them to all the challenges of life in a safe environment. They will interact with people who are vastly different from different cultures and discover that we aren’t all that different.

However, I am positive about the evolution of online education. It is certainly not a complete replacement for the traditional higher education experience. For the undergraduate student, the optimal model will need to have the right balance of an online and in classroom experience. That model does not exist, but I believe it will be developed over the next 5 to 10 years and become the new tradition.

@readyforthenet - and at the sheer cost involved, which has gone up between 439 and 520% since 1982 (depending on source), students can never find themselves, contribute, or do anything else in the end.

Before addressing the article I decided to look up the word college. What does college mean, I asked? It seems that there is no meaning other than a place one goes to learn something after one has completed other education. But, a college is more than that. It is a place where like minded people - professors work. They in turn teach people who want to know what the teacher knows about that which the student wants to know. That at least seems to me to be what a college is.

There have been correspondence or what are now called on-line courses for years. Learning in a solitary environment is great for some, but not for most. A college provides motivation to students. It does so by providing an environment where learning is held in high regard and then again there is the threat of a failing grade and being asked to leave - a motivation in its own right. Now we all know that some students do not take all this high regard stuff seriously, but that in no way diminishes the environment fostered by a college.

It seems to me, that if one is highly motivated and well trained in basic academic skills, then on-line is fine. In fact, just send that person to a good library and turn him/her loose. The person will walk out well versed in that which interests them, but for most - me included - the rich environment where learning is held in high regard was and is the stimulus that propelled me to gain the little knowledge that I have.

Additionally, a college fosters a sense of curiosity. The professor challenges and the nuances conveyed in verbal presentations, queries, and give and take occurs in a good class. Does the same occur when taking an on-line course? Does an on-line course foster that sense of grasping a concept or bit of knowledge? Do students in on-line courses say to the computer as a student can say to the professor: Oh, I get it!

This article, like almost all coverage of online learning, misses the timeline of the revolution in online education. MOOCs are the latest rage and get lots of press because of the connection to elite institutions. The quote "3 in 10 college students report taking at least one online course, up from 1 in 10 in 2003 — but afterward, most are no better off than they would have been at their local community college." is indicative of the pervasive, shallow understanding of the history. Right now more than 6 million college students are enrolled in fully online, credit-bearing online courses. That is more than one in three of every college student in the country. And these students ARE getting college credit, unlike the students enrolled in MOOCs. Tell me, why is it that the author believes that real college credit is inferior to a MOOC certificate that, despite the hoopla, is unrecognized by the elite institution that provided it when it comes to offering college credit? This is the persistent story of online education. The revolution already happened - online learning has already become part of the mainstream of higher education. But until the Ivies get involved (and suddenly "invent" what has already been successfully invented) the work of the last 20 years goes unnoticed. Its a shame. see http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/index.asp for some actual insight into online education.

Where can I find more information about this 2011 Science journal study or a detailed list of the practices utilized in these MOOC courses that seems to be so effective?

Also, what is the point of the universities partnering with and investing in MOOCs if they're not giving college credit? It seems one-sided in that the MOOC gets the prestige of being "involved" with these universities, but is being mocked as not deserving of the credits. So, I'm left confused.

Not just college; many high schools in Florida use online courses to avoid hiring teachers, or when they don't have enough qualified kids for AP classes to justify hiring an AP teacher. One girl in my son's graduating class took almost all of her Senior year classes online (only it was thru FL virtual school which is an unqualified disaster! Terrible system, confusing, poor materials, not user-friendly or well organized).

Any advancement that allows more students to access education should be applauded. MOOCs can provide learning opportunities to those who might not be able to pursue a traditional college degree program.

However, there are key differences between MOOCs and online degree programs offered by colleges and universities that any student considering these options should know. The biggest difference is that most MOOCs do not result in college credit. While some institutions offer certificates upon MOOC completion, most cannot be applied toward a college degree program.

Also, many colleges and universities foster faculty engagement, provide small class sizes, offer student support services, and have 24-hour tech support. These advantages are often crucial to meeting student needs and improving student success. You can’t find these factors in MOOCs today. For now, the benefits of MOOCs lie in their accessibility and low cost. It’s important to note this distinction as buzz continues to build around MOOCs and they’re compared to online degree programs.

First off, great article! Kudos to you: when an author gets a reaction out of me and gets me thinking I always grow out of the experience.

You said about the MOOCs you started but did not finish:

but online, they could not compete with the other distractions on my computer

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I think this is what a lot of people run into learning online.

I know I'd like to teach a very engaging online course that causes people to want be involved for more than it being a required course for their major. I do have many students who engage in the course material a lot more than they need to be. But I have many more who do the minimum or drop by the wayside, prey to the other distractions in their life and on their computer. The question is: How do I engage them in the online environment. I can't travel to Italy. I don't have the time nor the tech support to develop video lessons which have formative assessment questions embedded at intervals.

Should I give up offering more or less local online courses and let the schools with more resources take over educating the students of our state?

I don't know. What is the answer? I need to ask the administrators at my cc what they are thinking about this all.

I was disappointed to read the disparaging remarks made about community colleges in this article: "Many students nevertheless pay hundreds of dollars for these classes — 3 in 10 college students report taking at least one online course, up from 1 in 10 in2003 — but afterward, most are no better off than they would have been at their local community college." Ms. Ripley provided no support for this comment and chose not to include in her classroom experiences a course at her local community college. Community colleges provide diverse and rigorous course offerings taught by well-trained, experienced faculty often in small classes that offer individualized attention. President Obama finds community colleges worthy of his vocal support, perhaps Ms. Ripley should take a closer look.

As a GTA, I'd give your "report" a check-minus grade. Your evidence (which is largely about a free online course developed outside of college bounds) does not support your argument that college itself is being re-thought. Your supporting data is largely based on a survey of the uninvolved - the category of "college senior administrators" is ill-defined and unexplained. While it is true that college is extremely expensive, the debt load for graduates is roughly equivalent to buying a new fully-loaded Chevy Cruze. That is inconvenient, but it is not a "crisis." Nor, judging by demand, is there a "crisis" on the nation's campuses when it comes to curriculum. What your special report seems to have defined is an approach to delivery method for text materials -- more an indictment of textbooks and a book-based style of learning than of college itself. College has plenty of problems, including a mystifying idea that those with advanced degrees in esoteric subjects make the best business administrators, but your report fails to fulfill its stated objective. In the future, please state your argument, support it with direct evidence, give footnotes so that others can access your sources, and please make your conclusion match your argument.

Fine and dandy, but most online classes are simply electronic correspondence classes. Instead of the old three-ring binder with weekly lessons and homework, now you have the Internet and your laptop. They still require a great deal of motivation and self-discipline. Some students and some types of subjects are better suited for online classes. But try teaching design or English online. If they are high quality, they are expensive and if they are inexpensive, they are lousy. And what arrogance by the guy who said that the top 50 universities will probably "be OK." In fact, I think most of the public, four-year campuses will "be OK" for the foreseeable future. In the long run, it may be different. But as Lord Keynes said, in the long run we're all dead.